"Those elders are me!"

Hello family,

They let me send a letter to you earlier to let you know that I survived the first few days at the MTC. I'm afraid you'll get this before that gets to you, though. I'll try to give you the basics without repeating myself too much.

First of all, I'll only here for three weeks. I think I will be switching to the Lima Peru MTC. No one has bothered to tell me or my companion this yet, but every other member of my district is scheduled to leave on the 22nd.

My companion is Elder Heaps from Tooele Utah. He is very diligent and obedient. He is a good example to me. We are still working out problems with our teaching styles, but he is willing to work hard to do what ever we need to do. There are 11 elders in my district. Two companionships are going to Santa Cruz Bolivia, one companionship is going to Cuzco Peru, Elder Heaps and I are going to Ecuador, and the "tres-panionship" is going to Lima Peru North, West, and Central. The four elders going to Bolivia are having visa problems and my not make it with the rest of the district to Peru. So far it seems that no one else is having any problems with visas. The Bolivians drew a map of South America and drew an arrow to Bolivia that says "vamos aqui juntos!" Drawing the map, we learned that most of our district does not know where they are going. We had a large geographical argument.

Hermana Borgolthaus

Our teachers are Hermano Frampton, Hermano Finter and Hermana Borgolthaus. Hermano Frampton is our favorite. Hermano Finter is just back from his mission in Chile. So far we have not done too much language study. We have mostly focused on our purpose as missionaries and how to best address the needs of our investigators.

Coming to the MTC was not as overwhelming as I thought it would be. It's more grinding. When you arrive, there are literally people every five feet telling where to go next. On the first day, I realized I had very little Spanish endurance. My brain got fried quickly and I just stopped trying to think because when I did, it was in Spanish. I've found I'm very good at pretending I can speak Spanish. It kind of blows away the Spanish beginner. I can get the native speakers to raise their eyebrows when I throw in some irregular subjunctive conjugation when I don't know the right grammar. Our teachers tell us that for an intermediate level district, we all speak very good Spanish. We have a few elders who lived on the southern border and can communicate whatever they want, but have a lot of bad speaking habits and are missing a lot of the missionary vocabulary. When we walked into class, the teacher had written up on the board "No hables o entiendes ingles." We have been speaking mostly Spanish, but the teacher often repeats himself in English.

Its great to be here. Every time I see Elder Heaps and my reflection in a window, I get a little chill. I think, "Those elders are me!" This is the real deal. I can't wait to get out into the field and begin to help people come to know Christ and their Father in Heaven.

Hope to hear from you all soon,
Love Elder Girndle